I. Don’t. Like. This. Trend.

It’s interesting to see how certain trends become popular in our culture today. At the same time, though, it’s also frustrating if I am not a big fan of some of the trends.

For example, I am constantly seeing people using periods in order to create emphasis in a sentence. I understand why they do it and I suppose it is working for them, but it’s still annoying.

Someone may write “This. Needs. To. Stop.” or something like that to try to cleverly emphasize what they are saying, but what I see is “Sen. Tence. Frag. Ment.”

You know what’s not a sentence? “This.” Similarly, “Is.” is not a sentence. You can’t just throw whatever punctuation you want around in order to try to make a point.

If you really want someone to pause for emphasis, why not use a comma? “This, needs, to, stop” is still annoying, but at least it makes a little more sense than the periods.

Or what about our old friend the ellipsis? “This…needs….to…stop,” has a nice pause to it.

How about a semicolon? “This; needs to stop,” would also gain attention and make people think for a moment about if you wrote that correctly or not.

Or best of all, why not try an exclamation point? It adds emphasis, which seems to be the main point of this anyway. “This needs to stop!” That makes sense, unlike a bunch of words with periods after each of them.

In addition to that trend, here are a few others that have been annoying me recently:

The terms SCOTUS, POTUS and worst of all, FLOTUS – I can’t stand these acronyms. First of all, you sometimes have to think about them in order to remember what they mean. Also, it’s not saving you much time to say POTUS instead of President, or FLOTUS instead of First Lady.

Also, if people are trying to be super official with these titles, shouldn’t they be SCOTUSA, POTUSA, and FLOTUSA”?

What about the Speaker of the House? Why doesn’t that individual get one? I think the acronym would be SOTHOROTUSA.

The definition of insanity – I constantly hear commentators, especially sports commentators saying “The definition of insanity is repeating the same actions over and over again and expecting different results,” in order to sound clever. You know what? That’s not the definition at all. The definition of insanity is “a severely disordered state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder.” I understand their point, but it is annoying to hear them constantly saying this.

To me, the commentators are actually referencing the definition of perseverance. If someone tries something over and over and it finally works, they will praise that person or team and extol the virtues of perseverance, a strong will and toughness. If they try something over and over again and it does not work, though, then it is somehow insanity.

Jim Carrey’s paintings – I think Jim Carrey is very funny, I love several of his movies and he seems like a smart and good person. I think his paintings are interesting, too. But it seems like every week he has a new political painting that is getting is getting attention on the national websites.

What must other painters think of this? I know nothing about art, but are his paintings better than the other paintings, political or not, that are out there? How does he make them all so fast? What happens to them after they make national news each week? Are people buying them? If every famous person starts painting, are those paintings going to become national news, too, or are his different?

Things being lit – This one more just confuses me more than anything. I understand that being lit is apparently a good thing, but how did this term come to be? Is it because it is “on fire” or “hot”? What would the next step up from lit be? Embers? Inferno? What is the opposite of lit? Extinguished? Cold? “That outfit is smokey!”

How does English lit fit into this discussion? Most importantly, how will I know if something I do or wear is lit? Am I told old to do something lit? In order to know if something is lit or not, should it have to pass a litness test?

The dog waking me up early every morning – Why won’t Scooter sleep later? Doesn’t he understand it’s not time to eat or go to the bathroom yet? Why does he do the same thing every morning? Does that mean he’s insane? He should know that it makes me tired and cranky so that I end up complaining about paintings, punctuation and even the FDOOF (First Dog Of Our Family). I don’t like this!

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13 thoughts on “I. Don’t. Like. This. Trend.”

I LOVE THIS! You actually helped explain things that I actually don’t understand either. Or maybe we don’t understand but you helped explain the possiblities as to WHY? I have to say you made me giggle more than once, especially at the end with your dog. As an animal lover, I love them all dearly but they certainly can be very needy! Haha! I hope my commas, exclamation points and periods make my point! – DIANA

At some point. FDOOF must have woken you up early and startled you into actually getting up to see what was going on. That seemed really cool to FDOOF, so he did it again. And again. Adding in that you probably got a little more aggravated each time, it became so much more fun. And thus, a vicious cycle was begun. That! Needs! To! STOP!!! (or not, FDOOF is really just doing what his little doggie brain tells him needs to be done)

I think you are correct, FDOOF does seem to be enjoying this cycle. I’m glad he is telling me if he really needs to go outside, but sometimes now I think he is just trying to wake me up for reasons unknown. At least he does seem to be enjoying it. Thanks!

My current pet peeve (ok, one of my peeves as I’m apparently a multi-peeved sort) is a spoken annoyance: inserting the word “right?” into random places in a spoken sentence. I recently had to leave a webinar on a topic I had great interest in because the (quite well-educated and expert in her field) presenter inserted the word right into every sentence, sometimes not once but two, three, or four times. I tried to hang in and overlook it. But when it got to the point where I was tempted to use the little “raise your hand” icon on the webinar screen and type “why the %#@&*” are you using the word “right” over and over again?” I decided it was time to leave the webinar. Right?

That’s pretty funny, and that’s a good one, too! I think people sometimes do that to try to get people to buy into what they are saying or in an attempt to sound authoritative, but it is just annoying. And that would have annoyed me, too, listening to that presenter. That’s a funny story, though, and was a good reason to leave the webinar. Thanks!